Pitreavie Castle

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Pitreavie Castle, view from the northeast

Pitreavie Castle is a castle from the early 17th century in the Scottish village of Pitreavie , which belongs to the town of Dunfermline in Fife and is about three kilometers southeast of it. The town of Rosyth is only about one kilometer south of the castle.

Built as a Tower House by Henry Wardlaw, 1st Baronet Wardlaw, the building was later expanded and transformed into an 18th century castle under the Blackwood family. After it had stood empty for a long time, it was acquired by Henry Beveridge, who had it rebuilt and enlarged again from 1885. His descendants sold it to the British Aviation Department in 1938 , which it used to coordinate operations of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force Coastal Command . After the base was closed in 1996, the military extensions were put down and the mansion and the farm yard were converted into private apartments.

Since January 12, 1971 Pitreavie Castle stands as Listed Building category A under monument protection .

history

In the 14th century, the land on which Pitreavie Castle stands today belonged to Christian Bruce , a sister of the Scottish King Robert I. She had received it as a gift from him. At the beginning of the 17th century the area was owned by the Kello family (also spelled Kellock), who sold it to Henry Wardlaw of Balmule in 1608 for 10,000  Scottish Merks . He was the eldest son of Sir Cuthbert Wardlaw of Balmule and Chamberlain to Queen Anne of Denmark of Scotland . King James I had also appointed him castellan of Dunfermline Palace , the preferred residence of the Scottish court at the time. After Henry Wardlaw was knighted in 1613 , he began around 1615 with the construction of a typical Scottish tower house in L-shape at the site of today's castle. However, a fortified house must have stood there before , because a manor place in Pitreavie is mentioned in a document from 1614 . Subsequently expanded into a U-shape, the new building was very similar to the Baberton Manor built by James Murray († 1634) in Baberton (now a suburb of Edinburgh ) .

Pitreavie Castle on a drawing by Alexander Archer, 1834
Pitreavie Castle before Henry Beveridge's renovations

Elevated to baronet in 1631, Henry Wardlaw left the Tower House to his son of the same name when he died in 1637. This was followed as owner in 1652 by his son, who was also called Henry and died in 1653 without an heir. Pitreavie Castle then came to a different line of the Wardlaws. In 1699 it belonged to a member of the Wardlaw of Logie. He had numerous ash , birch and elm trees planted in the vicinity of the house . His family sold the property to Archibald Primrose, 1st Earl of Rosebery, in 1703 . From him it came in 1711 to Robert Blackwood, Lord Dean of Guild and later Mayor of Edinburgh. His family changed the Tower House to an 18th century country palace and remained the owners until 1884. That year Madox Blackwood sold the castle to Henry Beveridge, a wealthy mill owner and cloth maker. At the time of purchase, the building had been vacant for a long time. Beveridge commissioned the architect Charles Kinnear with plans for an extension and renovation. Work on this took place in 1885 and gave Pitreavie Castle an appearance that closely resembles the style of the Scottish Baronial . It received a portico that included a new main entrance. On the ground floor, Beveridge had small windows broken out all around and the south facade also changed. A new wing with a dining room was added on the east side, so that the castle then had an E-shaped floor plan. Inside, the lord of the castle had the vaulted ceilings on the ground floor removed in order to obtain higher rooms, and finally the main staircase moved from the west to the old east wing (now the middle wing). Beveridge also had changes made to the surrounding area of ​​the castle: On the west and east sides, two lodges were built on the access roads to the castle. In addition, he had a Japanese garden with a pond, waterfall, artificial island and wooden bridges laid out in the 1890s.

After Henry Beveridge's death in 1922, his descendants sold the property in 1938 for £ 12,306 to the British Aviation Department  , where the Royal Air Force (RAF) Coastal Command stationed there. From there the operations of the Royal Navy and RAF have been coordinated since World War II . After the end of the war, the property served as NATO headquarters for the North Atlantic area. For military use, the historical structure was supplemented by a number of modern additions, for example an extension to the east wing, which, among other things, accommodated the officers' mess. After the base was closed in 1996, almost all of these military additions were removed and demolished. Archaeological excavations took place in May 1996 , after which a large part of the palace area was built on with residential and commercial buildings.

In 2004 Kevin and Laura Simpson bought the manor house and had it converted into several residential units in close coordination with Historic Scotland . The work lasted a total of two years. They had over 100 trees planted in the area of ​​the palace garden, which is in the immediate vicinity of the main building. Two of the apartments created during the renovation can be rented as holiday homes.

description

Pitreavie Castle today consists of a multi-wing mansion and a multi-wing farm building from the 19th century and a pigeon tower to the east . The property also includes a garden area in which the remains of a Japanese garden from the late 19th century can still be seen to the southeast of the manor house.

Mansion

Exterior

View from the south

The three-storey manor house has brickwork made of sandstone blocks and consists of an older western part and a new eastern part. Both parts are closed by slate roofs. The floors can be easily distinguished from one another from the outside by means of cornices . The shape of the mansion developed from an L-shaped tower house through extensions to a symmetrical building with a U-shaped floor plan, the open side of which was closed off by a wall at the time. A slightly lower wing is added to the east of this house and a portico is in front of the former east wing. The building now measures approximately 120 by 30  feet (about 36.5 by 9.1 meters), with the old central wing being 66.6 feet long and 25 feet (about 20.3 by 7.6 meters) wide. The side wings of the former U-shape measure 19 × 14 feet (around 5.8 × 4.3 meters). Due to renovations and changes in the 18th and 19th centuries, only the outer walls on the west and east sides belong to the original structure from the 17th century.

The main portal is on the north side of the building in the almost square portico with a balustrade at the top. The door wall has a sculptural decoration in the form of thistles , the year 1885 and the initials HB for Henry Beveridge can be found in the frieze above the lintel . The gable of the triangular gable above shows the coat of arms of the Beveridge family and their motto "Dum Spiro Spero" ( German:  "As long as I breathe, I hope" ). The original main entrance is still preserved today and is on the courtyard side of the west wing. It also has a triangular gable as a crown. Its gable shows foliage and fruits that frame an S over the letter HW. They probably stand for "Sir Henry Wardlaw". The gable is crowned by a star, the crest of the building family. Their coat of arms can be found together with the motto “Familias firmat pietas” ( German  “Piety strengthens families” ) on a stone tablet on the north outer side of the second floor. However, the panel is not original, it comes from a later period. The entrance is still secured with a protective iron grating that is a little over 6.7 feet (about two meters) high and 4.2 feet (about 1.3 meters) wide.

The former main entrance used to be in the former east wing in an analogous place opposite another door, which was replaced by a window in the late 19th century. The north-facing corners of the courtyard are studded with slender round towers . On its ground floor with an outside diameter of five feet (about 1.5 meters), the masonry has only narrow slits of light. The upper floors, crowned by conical roofs , however, have windows. They also have a larger outer diameter, because several layers of cantilevered console stones between the ground floor and the first floor ensure a larger base area for the towers on the higher floors. The inside is occupied by spiral staircases that differ in their running directions.

The south facade of the mansion was completely redesigned in the late 19th century. In the western area, at the level of the ground floor and first floor, two lobes are built in front of them, which are closed off by a balustrade at the top. The facade between them is divided into three axes by windows . These are flanked by pilasters on the ground floor and by Corinthian columns on the first floor .

inside rooms

Ground floor plan from the end of the 19th century

In the early days of the house, the ground floor was home to the kitchen and various windowless storage rooms, which corresponded to a standard room arrangement in Scottish tower houses. The living rooms were on the first floor, while the second floor accommodated bedrooms. In some rooms there is still stucco and paneling from the 19th century. The situation is different with old tapestries that once hung in the dining room (now the Drawing Room ). They were taken away and are now hanging in Fordell Castle, about three kilometers away .

From the Victorian entrance hall in the portico, the visitor enters the stairwell with a large staircase made of oak . The room used to be decorated with wall paintings in tempera technique showing scenes from the Middle Ages . They came from the painter Charles Hodge Mackie , who had installed them there in 1894. However, they are no longer preserved today. In the large window of the stairwell there are stained glass depicting the Beveridge family crest. In addition, the initials HB with the motto “Laetus Sorte Mea” ( German  “Happy with my fate” ) and the initials RB and the motto “Deus Providebat” ( German  “God has provided for” ) are shown.

The former kitchen on the ground floor is today Weapons Room ( English Gun Room ) because the family there kept Beveridge hunting rifles and fishing tackle. During the military use of the castle, the room first served as an office and was later used as a room for smaller celebrations. The arch of the former chimney vent, the stones of which bear numerous stonemason's marks, has been preserved to this day . Another notable room is the flag room ( English Flag Room ) on the first floor. It got its name because the standards of the units stationed on the castle grounds were initially kept there before the room was then used as a TV room. Henry Beveridge originally had this room set up as a private house chapel at the end of the 19th century, as evidenced by the oak paneling with carved quotations from the Bible.

Other buildings

Pigeon tower

Of the outbuildings belonging to the castle, only a pigeon tower and a three-wing commercial complex, which has been converted into residential units, remain to the northeast of the manor house. The pigeon tower dates from the late 17th or early 18th century. It has a square floor plan with a side length of 3.9 meters; a pent roof completes its plastered masonry.

In the early 2000s, about 200 meters southeast of the main building, there was still the Ostlodge, one of two former lodges that belonged to the palace complex. The Westlodge had been sold much earlier, along with the former castle gate, for 750 pounds and demolished to make way for a new railway line. Its eastern counterpart was a two-storey sandstone building with three axes and an extension on the west side. It was listed as a Category C building on September 16, 1999.

The former gateway to the castle was ten feet wide and its design was similar to the former main entrance to the manor house. Above its arched gate passage, it had a triangular gable framed by volutes , which showed a D over the letter EW. Presumably they stood for "Dame Elizabeth Wilson", the wife of the builder. The wrought iron grating of the gateway is now in the museum at Dunfermline Abbey .

The complex's former sundial can no longer be seen in its original location, but in the garden of Inveresk Lodge in East Lothian . It used to stand on an octagonal stone pedestal in front of the south facade in the garden of Pitreavie Castle. Without this, it was 6.3 feet tall. On its north side hung the coat of arms of the Wardlaw family in a heart-shaped shield, while the south side showed the coat of arms of the Beaton of Balfour. Together with the year 1644 on the east side and the initials HW, the coats of arms indicate that the sundial was built by Henry Wardlaw, the lock builder's son, because he was Lord of Pitreavie from 1637 to 1653 and with Margaret Beaton of Balfour married.

literature

  • Martin Coventry: The castles of Scotland. A comprehensive reference and gazetteer to more than 2000 castles. 2nd Edition. Edinburgh, Goblinshead 1997, ISBN 1-899874-10-0 , p. 280.
  • John Gifford: The Buildings of Scotland. Fife. Penguin, Harmonsworth 1988, ISBN 0-14-071077-9 , p. 345.
  • Thomas Hannan: Famous Scottish Houses. The Lowlands. Reprint of the 1928 edition. James Thin, Mercat Press, Edinburgh [1984], ISBN 0-901824-75-5 , pp. 149-152.
  • David MacGibbon, Thomas Ross: The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland. Volume 2. David Douglas, Edinburgh 1887, pp. 537-545 ( digitized ).
  • Nigel Tranter: Tales and Traditions of Scottish Castles. 3. Edition. Neil Wilson Publishing, Glasgow 2000, pp. 161-164 ( digitized from another edition) .
  • Nigel Tranter: The Fortified House in Scotland . Volume 2: Central Scotland. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1963, pp. 344-345.
  • SW: Pitreavie House. In: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions of Scotland (Ed.): Eleventh report with inventory of monuments and constructions in the counties of Fife, Kinross, and Clackmannan. HMSO, Edinburgh 1933, pp. 124-125 ( digitized version ).
  • Charles Wemyss: The Noble Houses of Scotland. 1660-1800. Prestel, Munich / London / New York 2014, ISBN 978-3-7913-4762-2 , pp. 180–181.

Web links

Commons : Pitreavie Castle  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Entry of the castle on Scotland's National List of Monuments , accessed November 28, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b c Castle information on Clan MacLean website, Part 1 , accessed November 28, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b c Kirsty McLuckie: Live like royalty. Historic Scottish castle offering Airbnb apartments. In: The Scotsman . Edition from July 2017 ( online ).
  4. ^ John C. Gibson: The Wardlaws in Scotland. A history of the Wardlaws of Wilton and Torrie and their cadets. W. Brown, Edinburgh 1912, p. 119.
  5. ↑ According to Nigel Tranter: Tales and Traditions of Scottish Castles. 2000, p. 161. In other publications there is also an occasional statement that the house was built around 1638 and thus under Henry Wardlaw's son of the same name. See, for example, Maurice Lindsay: The castles of Scotland. Constable & Company, London 1986, p. 395.
  6. ^ Stuart Reid: Castles and Tower Houses of the Scottish Clans 1450-1650 (= Fortress. Volume 46). Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2006, ISBN 1-84176-962-2 , p. 56.
  7. ↑ SW: Pitreavie House. 1933, p. 124.
  8. ↑ a b c Castle information on Clan MacLean website, Part 5 , accessed November 28, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b History of Pitreavie Castle on the castle website ( Memento of the original from December 6, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed November 28, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / pitreaviecastle.com
  10. ^ A b D. Beveridge: Between the Ochils and Forth. A description, topographical and historical, of the country between Stirling Bridge and Aberdour. William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh / London 1888, p. 242 ( digitized ).
  11. ↑ a b Castle information on Clan MacLean website, Part 3 , accessed December 1, 2017.
  12. ^ Nigel Tranter: Tales and Traditions of Scottish Castles. 2000, p. 161.
  13. ↑ Information on the castle as a military base on forces-war-records.co.uk , accessed on December 1, 2017.
  14. ↑ T. Neighbor: Pitreavie Castle (Dunfermline parish). In: Robin Turner (Ed.): Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 1997. 1998, ISSN  0419-411X , p. 38 ( PDF ; 20.2 MB).
  15. ↑ Website of the castle ( Memento of the original dated December 6, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed December 1, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / pitreaviecastle.com
  16. ↑ Thomas Hannan: Famous Scottish Houses. The Lowlands. [1984], p. 149.
  17. ^ A b David MacGibbon, Thomas Ross: The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland. Volume 2, 1887, p. 537.
  18. ↑ Henry Beveridge: Pitreavie House. In: Transactions of the Edinburgh Architectural Association. Volume 1. E. & S. Livingstone, Edinburgh 1891, pp. 105-106.
  19. ^ David MacGibbon, Thomas Ross: The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland. Volume 2, 1887, p. 543.
  20. ^ David MacGibbon, Thomas Ross: The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland. Volume 2, 1887, p. 538.
  21. ^ A b Thomas Hannan: Famous Scottish Houses. The Lowlands. [1984], p. 151.
  22. ↑ a b c Castle information on Clan MacLean website, Part 6 , accessed December 5, 2017.
  23. ↑ Entry on the pigeon tower  in Canmore, the database of Historic Environment Scotland (English), accessed on December 4, 2017.
  24. ↑ Former location: 56 ° 2 ′ 51.9 ″  N , 3 ° 24 ′ 54.8 ″  W.
  25. ↑ Former location: 56 ° 2 ′ 52.8 ″  N , 3 ° 25 ′ 45.3 ″  W
  26. ↑ entry of Ostlodge in the national monument list Scotland , access on 4 December 2017th
  27. ↑ a b c d S. W .: Pitreavie House. 1933, p. 125.

Coordinates: 56 ° 2 '54.4 "  N , 3 ° 25' 6.5"  W.